This name will appear in many outlets and probably many lists this year. Gaerea have all it needs to be a part of the widely discussed leading names of the modern black metal scene, right along the biggest names of the scene. They have been on an upward spiral since their debut, they are as photogenic as needed and now come around with an extremely attractive record to prove themselves. But do they? Mirage is by all means grandiose, really expressive and acutely crafted. The sound is powerful and the tracks compelling, cracking the formula of how to make properly heavy material with loads of melodies, borrowing some elements from post-black metal, evocative clean guitar passages and an intense live presence to go along with it. You can feel the vocalist’s agony through these painful screams, and the album explosively starts with highlights “Memoir” and “Salve”. “Deluge” is also entertaining, “Arson” somehow manages (even though I hear some melodies that are the same as in Mgła), and that reveals a negative aspect of Mirage, its slightly underwhelming evolution until the end. There’s serious blasting in the beginning but it feels to me as ideas become more and more sparse as it progresses. “Ebb” has pretty standard, one-dimensional riffing, the filler clean guitar part of the self-titled track removes a lot of the album’s potential up to that point, and both “Mantle” and the closing “Laude” contain nothing more than average atmospheric / post-black metal lines. Thankfully, the delivery on the vocals often saves the day in the record, which is as a whole a quite satisfactory listening experience, despite the compositional weaknesses in some points. Despite that, this point will not alienate the fans who will worship this, or it will go unnoticed as Mirage is a generally powerful release. Therefore, the enormous praising that Gaerea receive, is not completely unjustified, yet I wouldn’t completely agree on how groundbreaking or genre pushing this work actually is. [3.25/5 - Good]
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